Day: February 4, 2019

Lunar New Year celebration comes in various forms. Chinese people wear red jackets and jumpers to the streets, buy red lanterns and paper-cuttings to decorate their homes and even prepare red steamed buns to be eaten during family reunions. Around China, family get together to eat different types of dumplings, such as savoury ‘jiao zi’…

Beijing’s Forbidden City is one of the Chinese capital’s must-see tourist attractions, a UNESCO World Heritage site which provides incredible insight into the lives of China’s emperors. But come 2020, there’ll be a new reason to visit this former imperial palace when the complex’s Qianlong Garden will be open to the public for the first…

When we have to give a talk to a group of people, we feel anxious and experience the bodily fear responses that do not make sense now: The system is not meant to function in this safe context. As a psychiatrist specialized in anxiety and trauma, I often tell my patients and students that to…

What’s in a number when it comes to age? Adult female brains appear, on average, a few years younger than same-aged male brains, a new study finds. This suggests that sex affects how our brains age, which in turn might influence our tendency to develop neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, according to research published Monday…

The fireworks are being prepared. The red envelopes are being filled. And, around the world, hundreds of millions of people are coming together to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Across the UK, lanterns are being hung in Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham and many of our other great cities – including here in London, home to one…

The Chinese New Year has been celebrated for more than 4,000 years and is a public holiday in China. The event is celebrated by millions of people around the world and is the most significant holiday in the Chinese calendar. Huge displays of fireworks and firecrackers are, like in many other cultures, a part of…

Thousands of pupils will practise mindfulness at school to help them deal with the ‘pressures of the modern world’. Pilot schemes in 370 primaries and secondaries will test different approaches to improving children’s mental health. The trial, to run until 2021, will be one of the largest of its kind in the world. It will…

We have always been told that to lose weight you need to eat less and exercise more – but according to an exercise physiologist this simply isn’t true. Australian Drew Harrisberg told Body+Soul that although weight loss involves achieving a calorie deficit it’s a lot more complex than just that. He explained that the average…

As Bette Davis might well have said: ‘Your midlife years ain’t no place for cissies.’ As if the menopause wasn’t enough, with its hot flushes and mood swings, midlife stress and its attendant insomnia are also common. This might be exacerbated more than ever on the first weekend after Dry January, which can see us…

Rates of cancer are rising quicker in millennials because they’re fatter than previous generations, scientists say. Obesity-related cancers – including bowel, womb and pancreatic – are significantly increasing in under-50s, suggesting numbers will soar in decades to come. Experts warned it is further evidence of a time bomb which threatens to reverse decades of progress…